Category Archives: Labor

06.28.16
by

Scott Walker’s Wisconsin: Where Teachers are Linebackers, and To The Rich Go The Spoils

 

wisconsin

I’ve been lovingly making fun of this sign for years- really, you have all three?- but I don’t know if I ever noticed the “open for business”. Is that new. 

 

Here at Shooting Irrelevance, we’ve spent some time talking about what Scott Walker is doing to Wisconsin, because being a Chicago kid, we’ve spent a lot of time in Wisconsin. I love the state: love the people, love the food, love the drinking culture. I realized once it is the unpretentious south. You can’t see them writing a Huckabee-style book called God and Hot Ham Rolls. It’s a beautiful place where nature plays a deep role.

Underneath all that, or perhaps because of the cold winters and the need for community, is a fierce tradition of progressive populism. Wisconsin is our great labor state, or at least it was. That’s one of the tragedies of Scott Walker. He came in with the idea to ruin Wisconsin, to ruin the idea of Wisconsin. To literally change the Wisconsin Idea.

As we said once:

If you want to know everything base and venal about Scott Walker and the Wisconsin Republicans, remember that the literally wanted to edit the Wisconsin Idea to remove anything about the human spirit, and put in language about the state’s workforce needs.

The mission of the system is to develop human resources to meet the state’sworkforce needs, to discover and disseminate knowledge, to extendknowledge and its application beyond the boundaries of its campuses and toserve and stimulate society by developing develop in students heightened intellectual, cultural, and humane sensitivities, scientific, professional and technological expertise, and a sense of purpose. Inherent in this broad mission are methods of instruction, research, extended training and public service designed to educate people and improve the human condition. Basic to every purpose of the system is the search for truth.

(lines are Walkers’ proposed edits)

It’s this baseness, this venality, this reduction of the unaligned poor to gristle in a mill that is the heart of the modern conservative movement. Trump’s white nationalism is a part of it, of course, but when he is (hopefully soon) swept from the stage this will remain. It’s the main economic message. Most humans exist to make others rich. Money is the only power. It’s true materialism.

Walker confirmed this yesterday, when talking about school funding, and how the rich school should be able to hoard all the good teachers.

Walker said school districts can set pay based on performance and hire based on merit.

“It’s about putting the best and the brightest in the classroom,” Walker said. “If someone is an exceptional talent and wants to go into education, they can be rewarded for that.”

When asked whether he thought such incentive-driven salary programs would be a hindrance to allowing school districts to keep quality teachers, Walker compared teaching to being a player in the NFL.

“If the Green Bay Packers pay people to perform and if they perform well on their team, (the Packers) pay them to do that,” Walker said. “They don’t pay them for how many years they’ve been on the football team. They pay them whether or not they help (the Packers) win football games.”

And, you know, some schools are the Pack or the Pats, and some are the Rams. That’s just the way the market works. You have winners and Lions.

Walker was a joke during the Presidential campaign, but he didn’t disappear. He went back to his true love: ruining Wisconsin. Walkerism isn’t going away. White nationalism and “othering” will alwas be a driving force in the GOP, as presently constituted, but its fires might not always burn so bright. When that fire is embers this mentality, the desire to turn everything into commodity, including and especially people, will remain.

 

(Note: everytime I type “ruining Wisconsin”, and I’ve noticed this in gmail as well, it is underlined and says “did you mean to say ‘running'”.  Nope.)

06.24.16
by

Chicago freight, the new Panama Canal, and The Dominance of Trade

panamacanal2-16-wiki-18894

Ships passing through the Panama Canal. We needed a bigger canal, for bigger ships. Hell, dig up the whole country!

After years of delays, mismanagement, disaster, and an economic downturn, the expanded Panama Canal (which saw much worse during its initial construction) is set to open on Sunday. This is a deeper and wider lane for the enormous freighters that have accompanied Asia’s economic rise: the massive sun-blotting  container ships, quarter-mile long, and capable of carrying tens of thousands of tons.

This is extremely important for trade, in a value-neutral sense, because it means that the giant ships, which couldn’t fit in the narrower and shallower original canal, will be able to bypass the West Coast and go directly to New York and other East Coast ports. The ramifications of this quickly trickle down.

Crain’s, the business paper out of Chicago which is not exactly a Sanders-ite rag, talked about the potential impact on this railroad hub. Ships that couldn’t fit the canal would be loaded on trains heading to Chicago, and thence to the east, following the same path that allowed Chicago to be the focal point of empire. Now, though, these ships can get through, which will have a potentially huge impact on Chicago’s economy. About 5% of the Chicago economy is based on railroad freight (Great Lakes shipping is another matter). If Chicago can be bypassed, that’s a lot of jobs that will disappear, thanks to a canal built half a world away.

Of course, no one seems really certain, and anyway, the impact might not be felt for years. Certainly, as the Journal reported, New York isn’t ready for these monster ships: the Bayonne Bridge isn’t tall enough, and it won’t be ready for at least another year.

That’s not to mention that the Canal itself has the hallmarks of a disaster, as epically reported by the Times. The locks are barely wide enough to handle the largest ships, and are almost exactly as long as the ships plus the two tugboats needed to maneuver them. There won’t be any room for error, which given the swirling currents when fresh water meets the ocean, could be a disaster. The tugboat union certainly thinks so. Panama awarded the contract to a rock-bottom bidder, who came in billions below the next-lowest, and it has shown. (The article almost makes you sympathetic with Bechtel, which is a hell of a thing to be.) The concrete has been leaky, and there might not be enough water.

 

Image from NYTimes. The new locks are 1400 feet. The Neo-Panamax ships are 1200. Tugboats are about 100 each. Snug!

And oh yeah, about that water: it mostly comes from a vast, manmade lake which provides most of Panama their drinking water. The Panamanian canal administrator has literally scolded the nation for drinking too much water, and lowering the levels, making it harder for the ships to pass through.

That seems to me to be the perfect image of the subservience to trade, of its dominance in our lives. A suspiciously rich and powerful bureaucrat, who awarded life-and-death jobs to a shoddy but connected international conglomerate, complaining about its citizens drinking too much water, and not allowing these enormous, inhumanly-scaled ships to pass through a gash cut through a continent, while two great cities thousands of miles away scramble to reconfigure an economy and raise bridges to let them pass, as workers in the cities the goods pass through lose their livelihood, and workers where the goods are made are beaten and starved and robbed.

We make these enormous ships. We dig through continents and connect oceans. We raise bridges. To say that we can’t do anything about the inequity and iniquity of global trade is to give in the free market superstition, the only truly global religion.

 

06.23.16
by

Brexit, Trump, and The New Dislocation

 

Make Great Britain, well, great again!

 

As I type this, ITV (through C-Span) is reporting that the Leave campaign is cruising toward a victory, with an 85% chance at victory. By the time I’m done, it could be a done deal. All night- or in the wee hours, if you are reading this in the immediately impacted areas- the results started to trickle toward the red, toward Leave. Wales, which has benefited enormously from the EU, while still suffering thanks to its postindustrial wreckage, was almost entirely and passionately Leave. England, with a resurgence of nationalism, went heavily toward an exit. Only Scotland kept it from being a total rout.

ITV just called it. It’s over. Brexit is a reality, and the world is a far different place.

It’s been a season of weirdness, on both sides of the ocean, two countries tied umbilically together. For as much as we pretend to be different, and as much as we are, there are real similarities, and they are bubbling to the surface, like some kind of deeply buried and seismically awakened sludge, in this year of simmering discontent and atavistic anger.

It’s impossible to discount what is happening. Throughout the night, there were references to the “white working class”, in cities like Manchester and Cardiff and throughout Wales, and how the Remain camp failed to persuade them that they are better off in a united Europe. I honestly don’t know if that is true they would be, though I suspect it is. But the argument is the same as it is here.

In the US, Trump is essentially in the Leave camp. I mean, he very literally is, having supported it (once he was told what it was). But instinctively, even if he didn’t know what it was, he knew, in his dark heart. He knew that “Leave” encompassed his entire campaign. The heart of Trumpism is a desire to leave the modern world. It’s a desire to leave a world where what once seemed certain and permanent (even if it was only a few generations old) was rapidly changing. It’s a desire to leave the world of complexity and uncertainty and retreat toward blood and soil. It’s the call to retreat disguised as victory.

And yes, that is a powerful message for many, left out of the global economy, punished by market forces that are beyond their control, but clearly in control of those who benefit. It’s a message that resonates because, while it blames “elites”, it really turns anger on those who are weaker (immigrants, Muslims, etc). It’s an extremely seductive howl, a lowing, lusty battle dirge. It accepts failure, but gives in to the desire to burn the world down with it. It’s the truncheon of the race riot manifest in the ballot box.

Both campaigns- Trump and Leave- have had violence as their main currency, or, if not the actual currency, the silver and gold that gives it value. Because when you tell people their country is under attack, and not just from immigrants, but from their children, and their grandchildren (as Satelan chillingly documents), and that they are being enabled by what are essentially quisling politicians, well, then what choice does a patriot have. It’s what led to the murder of Jo Cox. It’s what drives Trump’s supporters, like this terrifying racist. It’s not a policy. It’s sheer emotion.

This emotion is driven by modern dislocation. Yes, we’ve had immigration and a shifting balance of power for decades (it’s still mostly white, and male, but it is shifting). And yes, the UK has been in the EU for decades. But this is still relatively new. Before really the end of WWII an actual political alliance with France would have been insane. Even WWI was more out of the inconsistent European alliances that formed in the wake of Napolean. You don’t have many Englishman who remember France as an enemy, and the Continent as a wholly foreign place, but the memory remains. The memory of Empire remains, as it does, in another form, in America. This loss of identity, tied in with the shifting balance of power through immigration, assimilation, and expanded civil rights, is coupled with the very real economic dislocation of globalization. It all feels like a loss of power, and the personal and political can intertwine easily.

The memory of being on top is still powerful, and can be reanimated up by canny politicians who know how to stir up the blood that has dried in the soil. With sweaty passion and crocodile tears they gift life back into the blood, making it rich and liquid in a suddenly loamy soil, from which can sprout thousands of pairs of thick-booted feet, marching in unison to an old-fashioned martial beat.

It’s transoceanic, baby. Donald Trump doesn’t know anything about the world, but we’re living in his image.

06.22.16
by

Anti-Safety-Net Conservatives: Never Not Wrong

 

Lousy troublemaking veterans. Image from Chicago Tribune. 

In the Times morning brief, they always have a neat little “behind the news” section, called the “Back Story” pinned to a headline or an anniversary. I usually enjoy it, today more so than others. It starts with commemorations of WWI centennials (the 100th anniversary of the Somme starts in July), and mentions how the US is erecting a WWI memorial in Washington soon. We’re reminded that Great War vets had to march bloodily on Washington to demand rights, and how, to avoid a repeat of that, Roosevelt pushed the GI Bill, one of the great creators of equality in America, and one that, with the bracing comfort of Time, we assume was always universally loved. 

 

Right?

The G.I. Bill gave veterans low-interest loans to buy a home, farm or business; 52 weeks of unemployment insurance; job placement services; and up to four years of federal aid for learning.

When the legislation was introduced in Congress in January 1944, some lawmakers argued that the unemployment insurance would encourage veterans not to work. Others worried about the introduction of battle-hardened men to universities, at the time bastions of the rich.

Ignoring the predictable toffish bigotry of the latter (I’m sure the men of Harvard weren’t funding research into shellshock to mitigate war’s cruelty), doesn’t the first argument sound pretty familiar? It’s the battle cry of every conservative when faced with a program that might make people’s lives less miserable, that might protect them from the bitterness of the market. The “argument” that having basic protections will make people lazy, and is somehow antithetical to the magical free market, is still in play. It was for welfare, for Medicaid, for Medicare, and for Social Security. The argument carried into the Clintonian 90s, when welfare was slashed, to prevent lazy people from stealing from the rich.

Actually, don’t ignore the 2nd argument, because while I am sure it was also being made by ostensible liberals, or at least Wilsonian liberals, it is inherently conservative. These are “others”, the ones who are stealing from the makers so that they can be lazy, whether they are Jim Crowed blacks or brutish doughboys. One will note that the “guaranteed income makes you lazy” trope isn’t employed when it comes to the estate tax, but that’s because the worldview is that certain people are owed great fortune, and others should make do with a pittance. It’s basically mean, in the truest sense: small and base and vile, reducing any humans who aren’t us to gravel on the road. You see it in Scott Walker’s attempted evisceration of the Wisconsin Idea (in which the role of the university system becomes  “develop(ing) human resources to meet the state’s workforce needs.”).  And you see it in the Trump campaign, built on a snarling anger against everyone else, an anger all the more dangerous because it transcends class, and makes race the defining feature. It is a class-based argument as well, but one that says “you could be rich if it wasn’t for the others.”

That’s the thing about these arguments: they are always wrong. The GI Bill was one of the great achievements of the 20th-century. Social Security helps prevent the immiseration of the elderly. Welfare is a needed shield. The people arguing against them are always wrong, and are never arguing in good faith, but are preaching a twisted faith from a gilded altar in front of a bloody and charred sacristry.

06.07.16
by

Why Labor Rights As Part Of The Global Supply Chain Can Work

image

Pictured: not actually needed for the global economy to work. Image from ctv.com

One strange thing about staunch free-market advocates– who in self-image are as clear-headed about the real world as they are stout-hearted– is the mystical attachment to the lack of human agency in a human endeavor. The mystery of the market, and the “invisible hand”, is essentially the Gaia to their cute girl at the co-op. When global labor problems, and the immiseration of the Third World, is brought up, you’ll find shrugged shoulders and mumbling incantations about market forces. It’s strange to think that an economy predicated on container ships nearly a quarter-mile long and capable of carrying tens of thousands of tons, that can be unloaded by robots in massive ports, is somehow beyond the reach of human intervention.

There’s a growing movement to change that. It’s really easy to be upset when a Bangladesh factory collapses, or when you hear about union organizers for a South American sweatshop being killed, or any other of the iniquities of the global economy, but it turns out there is actually something that can be done. The invisible hand, shockingly, in attached to our arms.

Just as we have passed laws in this country that stop child labor, allow for organizing, and create working conditions that, in theory, allow you to live, we can do so for other countries. Obviously not directly, but by enforcing supply chain standards for the American and other Western businesses that use overseas factories. Over at Lawyers, Guns, and Money, Eric Loomis gives an outline of what this might look like (with a promise to delve deeper into it in the future).

1) All workers have the right to a union or workplace organization of their choice, free from harassment by employers or from corporations higher on the supply chain.

2) All workers have the right to a safe workplace.

3) All workers have the right to be free from physical, sexual, and verbal abuse.

4) All workers have the right to a livable wage based on local conditions.

5) All communities near global factories have the right to be protected from pollution

6) Western companies must take legal responsibility for the conditions in their supply chains. Western countries need to pass legislation ensuring this.

7) Western companies must agree to legally binding codes around pollution in their supply chains.

8) Corporations must take legal responsibility to eliminate all child labor, prison labor, and coerced labor in their supply chains.

9) Workers in supply chains must have legal recourse to violations of the basic principles listed above. If that cannot happen in the courts of their home nations, it must happen within the home courts of the western companies. That legal recourse should include access to corporate information and include the possibility for financial compensation for suffering.

10) These laws and regulations must travel with companies, so that they cannot escape national law in order to create a race to the bottom. Rather, the new legal regime follows the company wherever it operates.

To me, these seem like a no-brainer, and I think the political arguments against them won’t hold much water. Let’s look at a few of those.

  • The “It’s More Than They Make Now” Argument. This is a common one, especially amoing otherwise sympathetic lefties. The idea is that if you are in a sweatshop in Dhakar, you are maybe making more than you would be in a village in the countryside. This is possibly true. It also ignores the violence, lack of social safety net, and breaking of tradtional bonds that comes with it, of course. But the argument, the “race to the bottom” is that if make it less profitable for the multinational in Bangladesh, it’ll go somewhere else. That’s true if you work on a country-to-country basis, but not if you do so from the top down. If companies have to treat workers well in Mexico or Senegal or Vietnam, they won’t be able to go anywhere else. You can have the benefits of the global economy without worrying about making your entire country a hellhole for employees.
  • The “It’ll Never Get Passed” Argument. On the surface, this does seem to be a pie in the sky argument, but there’s really no reason for it to be so. I don’t see where the massive opposition will come from. After all, this isn’t going to cost Americans jobs- just the opposite. It staunches the flow by making it , if not more profitable to manufacture in America, at least not prohibitevly expensive. There are no real economic arguments against it, except the “corporate profits will be less” one, but come on. That only works when you paint them as job creators. That won’t fly. It works politically when you can ramble about job-killing regulations, but we’re talking about adding more regulations to countries that have “taken our jobs.”
  • The “Why Should We Support Their Unions When Ours Are Getting Killed Here?” Argument. This is a fairly persuasive one, at least emotionally.  After all, American labor standards have been ruined over the last generation. But that’s due in part to the globalized economy which incentivies businesses to pull out, and incentivizes states (who didn’t really need it, in many cases) to strip away more worker’s rights in order to keep or attract businesses. This creates pliant workers, who are worried that if they don’t acqueise to everything, they’ll be out of a job. But this stops the race to the bottom, and in doing so, I think, can reinvigorarate the American union movement.

I don’t think it will be easy, nor do I think it will create an international brotherhood, and nor do I think that we’ll see the glory days of the labor movement come roaring back. But it is, in many ways, a simple fix to the deep cruelty of the global economy, both here and abroad. A very comlicated and time-consuming one, and a long batle, but one that this nascent progressive coalition can fight, by rallying a large and diverse group of activists, from anti-globalization turtle-huggers (whom I love) to the bluest of the blue collar. It’s a winning issue.

05.18.16
by

Legacy And Language: Politico vs. Tim Noah

Timothy Noah had a typically sharp article this morning in Politico about the Obama administration implementing new rules that help promote a progressive policy, the most important being the new overtime wage rule, which guarantees the dangerous and un-American notion that people should be paid for the work they do.

The reason there is a rush of rules is due, as Noah explains, to a regulation passed in 1996 by Newt’s Congress. Per Noah:

Blame the Congressional Review Act. Enacted by a newly Republican Congress in 1996 as part of Newt Gingrich’s Contract With America, the CRA law gave Congress 60 legislative days after a regulation was issued to block it by using an expedited procedure.

…

Aimed at taming the regulatory leviathan, the law proved almost entirely ineffective because presidents could — and did — routinely veto resolutions of disapproval against their own agencies’ rules. But under one circumstance, the CRA could be deadly. Late in a president’s final year, 60 legislative days (which extend much longer than calendar days) could carry over into another administration. A new president of the opposite party would be tempted to squelch a predecessor’s pet project.

Now, since then, there have only been two changes of administration: Clinton to Bush and Bush to Obama, so this is still new. Geroge W. Bush knew to protect himself. He was the first President to use the law, overturning a late-term Clinton regulation that instituted ergonomic standards to protect workers against the crippling problems of repetitive stress. It’s important to remember that Bush wasn’t a hapless doof thrust into global chaos; he was an evil boneheaded dork who ran a cruel administration from the jump.

Regardless, he understood the rules, and so did the same thing that President Obama is doing now. As Noah said, Obama is actually behind the Bush pace for pushing rules. Obviously, that means he’s a tyrant, because nothing that happened before Obama was elected counts, but that’s not really the point. I’m interested in Politico here.

I don’t know if Noah writes his own headlines. But the headline here is at clickbaity and incendiary odds with the rest of the piece: “Obama Rushes Out Rules To Guarantee Legacy.” To be fair, Noah’s first sentence includes the weighted and misleading phrase “shoveling out regulations nearly one-third faster in its final year than during the previous three”, mentions the cost to business, and has a GOP congressman talk of a “regulatory onslaught” before any explanation, but the rest is sober and measured and comprehensive.

So a lot of this is on Politic, though some on Noah. If you read the headline, and skimmed the beginning, you’d think this was some kind of dastardly new scheme. “Rushing out rules” and “shoveling” at a clip nearly 1/3rd faster (which isn’t that much faster if you think about it- I don’t know how much heavy lifting “nearly” does there). It’s dramatic, and makes the continuation of the job he was elected to do seem nefarious.

But it’s the word “legacy” that really sticks. Journalists, especially of the Politico ilk, love to do this. The Climate Change accord was Obama shoring up his environmental legacy. The deal with Iran was his foreign policy legacy. Now, Presidents, as are people who aren’t in history books, are concerned with how they’ll be remembered. There’s no doubt about that. But the quest for a”legacy” is really them doing the job they were elected to do. The Climate Change and the Iran Accord were smart policy: progressive and important and a chance to make the world a better, more livable, and more peaceful place. Even if you disagree, this was policy. It was policy he was elected to enact.

But to Politico, all is artifice. The actions don’t matter; just the perception. It’s a TV show and a ratings grab, a garish tent of fools. It’s not just that they paint these pictures. They assume everyone is acting in equally bad faith, and that makes it easy for us to believe they are. It’s both cynical and credulous, and misses the point in every way.

Politico’s  main sin isn’t that it is a suck-up fest of conservative 3rd-wayism or that it is as shallow as it is insipid (writers like Noah notwithstanding). It’s that it wants you to be as dumb as it is. It believes that you want it. It degrades anything that is real because it can’t understand how someone can look beyond tomorrow’s headline. That’s the main reason Obama has always confounded them. He refuses to see the world in the same blinkered and pointless way that they do.

05.18.16
by

Labor and The Environment: Ask And Ye Shall Receive

Yesterday I said I hoped that Eric Loomis at LGM would do a post on the “environmental/labor rift” that the Times said was threatening Dem turnout this year. And he did!  He frames it as a long-standing rift in the labor movement.

This is related to changes in the labor movement over the past four decades. What the CIO did was undermine the building trades’ domination over the labor movement. But even though the rise of public sector unionism has to some extent replaced it, the loss of the giant and generally progressive industrial unions like the UAW (now only the 11th largest union in the country) and USWA has left a vacuum that the building trades were more than happy to fill. So what you have in the labor movement, other than remnant industrial unions, are the often very politically conservative (although not universally so) building trades that have been conservative for a century or more and the public sector unions that really operate with very different classes (and races) of workers and that sometimes really have very little in common with a union like the Laborers.

That makes sense, and it really gets to the heart of what “unions” mean these days. We have the romantic notion of them being about helping people in the rough and dangerous trades, which they have, for the betterment of the nation. But those aren’t the only unions, and in a time when they are under assault, certainly not the most powerful, and obviously not the most progressive (those trades were the heart of the “Reagan Democrats”, who are now just called “Republicans” by everyone but the media). It’s probably time the media realized they aren’t the sole voice of unions.

05.10.16
by

Identity Politics and The “Hunger for a Third Party”

 

Pictured: identity politics

 

The Atlantic has been writing a lot about whether their political coverage should include more about third parties, if that would be more fair and democratic. The initial reaction could be “of course not; that would be a waste of space. A 3rd-party has no chance.” The flip side is that of course they don’t have a chance, because no one writes about them. You can’t breathe without any oxygen.

Personally, I think The Atlantic, and other sources, should spend more time covering other political parties, but not because they have a chance. I think even with enough of a spotlight they wouldn’t be able to grow. Money and structure make it nearly impossible for our system to truly support a third party, and the latter reason isn’t necessarily negative. This is far from the first time in our history that people have looked to break up the duopoly, and even in times of turmoil- even when Whigs fall to the whayside- it coalesces again into two parties.

Still, though, there is the need to spend time focusing on what is happening on the outside, because it makes both parties more responsible (in theory, anyway) and allows for outsiders, like Bernie Sanders, to come in and shake things up. It might not matter electorally, but it matters in terms of policy, and it helps to showcase what people are thinking in this unruly nation.

Sometimes, that’s not very pretty.

Read more to find out what’s not very pretty! 

Continue reading →

04.27.16
by

Why Unions Are Good: A Political Syllogism

  1. Unions protect the middle class. The destruction of private sector unions dovetails unmistakably with the decline of the middle and working class and the massive leap in income inequality. There are other factors, but inequality wouldn’t be as destructive if it was just one axis rising faster, instead of a complete economic divergence.
  2. When people’s lives are wrecked it is easy for them to turn toward a demagogue promises them that things will be better, and just trust him, ok?
  3. All things being equal, when economic status is comfortable the tribalism inherent in humans doesn’t have as much sway. When it isn’t, then passions really boil.
  4. Unions still have influence over their members, which is why they are beginning to enter the fight against said demagogue. Even if trade deals are bad- and by and large they have been- electing someone who would be terrible for the country would also be bad for these workers.
  5. The natural union constituency is one of the major bases for the demagogue, which makes their animosity toward him important, and the strength and efficacy of that animosity vital.
  6. Therefore, unions are good and should not be destroyed. Strong private unions are good, and the attack on public sector unions, the last true protector of the working class, are bad.
  7. Because it stops Trump, ok? IT’S MATH!
04.11.16
by

Self-Driving Cars And The Technology Trap

scania_platooningtruckchallenge_still009

Image from Scania via Quartz

Over the weekend, as reported in Re/Code, Ford announced a successful test of an autonomous car driving in the dark- that is, without some of its equipment working. The car was driving without its camera, relying mainly on laser directions (lidar). Basically, it was like a human having to drive after their headlights went out, on a black moonless night. Or a bright one, where it was still hard to see. You know, just night, basically. Anyway, you and I would be in trouble, but the Ford car wasn’t. This is a big breakthrough.

I’m a passionate advocate of self-driving cars. Not professionally, because who the hell cares what I have to say about it, but personally. It makes me sick and angry to think that one moment of distraction by myself or another driver can kill someone I love or ruin their life forever, that a split second of indecision or mistake can have such a shattering impact. I think we’re going to look back at the era of human-driven cars as a time of unimaginable barbarism, where tens of thousands of people a year were killed and tens of thousands more maimed driving these glass and steel bullets at breakneck speeds. Self-driving cars will also be much better for fuel economy– there will be less driving around confused, less sudden braking, and fewer incidences of inefficient driving, the biggest cause of fuel waste.

There are drawbacks of course- system safety (imagine if a hacker breaks in and messes with V2V or V2I communications), a lack of autonomy, massive disruptions to the insurance industry, etc. There are huge political obstacles, as well as cultural ones. There is also the immediate problem that it will could cause huge layoffs in vulnerable sectors while immediately benefitting corporations. That’s a drawback, and one with unsettling human and political ramifications.

Continue reading →