UK banning internal combustion engines (ICE) in 2035

[Glenn E. Meyer]

Speaking of guys from India - as we divert from ICE - I had a job being a user consultant for Fortran programming in the depths of time. So I would look at your program for grammar violations, arithmetic errors, infinite loops, that sort of thing, memory limitations. I recall Indian grad engineering students becoming incensed because their program would be in the right format and would run but it did not calculate the correct engineering something. Like I was supposed know what was correct for gas pressure in some tank.

The best was when I was running a remote terminal site (as part of the job), the brillant young ones would put their deck of cards in the card reader and wait for the print out. Well, some genius leans over the card reader eating an ice cream bar. The sheet of coating falls off on the last card of his deck and whips into the machine! Oy!

I call the central site and say, this is Glenn, some genius just ran a chocolate bar into the reader. They tell me to shut it down. Tech will come by in the morning. Angry mob forms saying they can't do their homework! There was another site across a large campus (days before remote individual terminals). As they yell at me - I point them to Chocolate boy and I think they chased him across campus

[TGS]

As for the "competent young guy in India", most of the time they don't even have to be as competent as the 1st Worlder they replace, just "good enough" and "cheap". For the more transactional or easier work my company does, we can hire 6-7 Indians for every American.

And not just for IT.

Given that tax season is coming up, everyone here who hires an accounting firm to do your taxes should probably inquire as to who is actually doing your taxes. Most firms these days are outsourcing our taxes to India unless you specify that it must be done in house.

[BehindBlueI's]

And not just for IT.

Given that tax season is coming up, everyone here who hires an accounting firm to do your taxes should probably inquire as to who is actually doing your taxes. Most firms these days are outsourcing our taxes to India unless you specify that it must be done in house.

One of the advantages of a small town, I suppose. I still drive my papers 90 minutes away to use the same accountant I've used since 2003, the first year I had enough money to make an accountant worth hiring. She's not too much more money then doing it myself with a program, and she's consistently gotten me more of a refund PLUS steered me to a 529 with better benefits for my state. That last bit alone returns me about 5x what she charges me a year.

[Dan_S]

And not just for IT.

Given that tax season is coming up, everyone here who hires an accounting firm to do your taxes should probably inquire as to who is actually doing your taxes. Most firms these days are outsourcing our taxes to India unless you specify that it must be done in house.

What?

I guess I shouldn’t be shocked, but...I kinda am. I know who does my tax paperwork, at least.

[Baldanders]

The market will work things out.

By definition, the market always works things out. But the past is no guarantee that it will continue to provide good enough results for enough people to prevent capitalism from effectively being voted out of existence. There is no universal law that innovation must create new jobs. The fourth industrial revolution is unlike the previous three in that IT has finally gotten to the point of replacing human decision making and high-level cognition.

What if "working things out" translates to 50 % unemployment on an ongoing basis? Recent high levels of employment have done nothing to quell my long term fears about this, particularly since wages haven't budged. We still seem to be on a path of an ever-increasing percentage of overall wealth in a smaller and smaller group of people's hands.


I'm not making any predictions, IMO we are in the middle of a singularity in technology, economics, poliitics, and social mores. The future rules are just getting formulated now, and I don't think anyone has a clear idea of what they will be.

[OlongJohnson]

We won't talk about the need for additional resources for "oversight" or rework because that comes out of a different bucket. We also won't discuss the perks and freebies companies give workers "over there" to slow down the insane turnover that makes delivering a consistent and competent service more difficult than just running it out of a 1st World locale.

Hence the ongoing death of quality.

But to echo others in this thread, I was told at least a decade ago by an engineering manager in the US energy sector that the engineers he could hire in India were not only far less expensive, they were actually better engineers than the engineers he could find to hire here.

[Joe in PNG]

By definition, the market always works things out. But the past is no guarantee that it will continue to provide good enough results for enough people to prevent capitalism from effectively being voted out of existence. There is no universal law that innovation must create new jobs. The fourth industrial revolution is unlike the previous three in that IT has finally gotten to the point of replacing human decision making and high-level cognition.

What if "working things out" translates to 50 % unemployment on an ongoing basis? Recent high levels of employment have done nothing to quell my long term fears about this, particularly since wages haven't budged. We still seem to be on a path of an ever-increasing percentage of overall wealth in a smaller and smaller group of people's hands.


I'm not making any predictions, IMO we are in the middle of a singularity in technology, economics, poliitics, and social mores. The future rules are just getting formulated now, and I don't think anyone has a clear idea of what they will be.

Have you really thought out the long term end results of the solution most often proposed to this? Do you really think that things like universal incomes, or guaranteed jobs, or special regulations, or more centralized planing and government oversight would actually fix this potential problem? Did bread & circuses really work for the Romans, long term? Did the much touted low unemployment of the Soviet Union actually benefit their people?
The answer is no- the cure is much worse than the disease, and the most often prescribed solution is far worse than the problem it is supposed to fix. Trading freedom (specifically economic freedom) for security WILL result in the loss of both.

[JAD]

Who’s working on electric semi trucks to move goods to the markets or electric tractors to harvest foods?

Several people. Tesla is most visible and is a long way down the road. There are smarter, better people working on it. Hopefully, the shift from ICE will slow down long haul trucking and increase investment in rail, with the delay made tolerable by better logistics management. While I like the idea of inductive power rails on the roads, I would put my money on fuel cells in the 2030s.

Can the electric grids handle the additional load of charging all these vehicles? How are they going to make all the needed electricity? Coal? Natural gas. Nuclear?

The grids are more than capable in many states in the US; I can’t speak to the UK. It’s just not that much power. Natural gas makes land based centralized power generation so much cleaner and more efficient than any vehicle-specific power generation method that it’s pretty close to a no brainer. It will be interesting to see whether the movement has an epiphany about nukes being necessary to make things actually clean, but I’m hopeful.

Were are all the electricians to install the chargers for these electric vehicles? Some of these electric vehicles draw as much electricity to charge as a a/c or heating unit (60 to 100 amps). A lot of homes only have a 100 amp service.

That’s not actually a concern.

The batteries are another set problems.

They’re not as challenging as some people think, and they are changing radically. Solid state should be readily available by 2030; it’s twice as dense as current tech and as safe as wet wood.

Were is the money to pay for all this coming from?

From people’s desire to move themselves and stuff rapidly, which is either converted into infrastructure by the government in a socialist system like the UK’s, or by industry in a sensible system.

[JAD]

. But until the batteries aren't made out of lithium and cobalt, they can be recharged in five minutes, and they draw little power - they are nothing but sensible for urban populations, assuming the infrastructure is present, which it isn't.
.

Lithium isn’t that scarce (we were supposed to run out of oil twenty years ago), cobalt won’t be part of batteries in ten years, and 6C charging (six times the capacity of the battery in an hour; in practical terms a five minute charge) is five to eight years out. As far as ‘drawing little power,’ I imagine you’re talking about efficiency; NMC cells have /stupid/ round trip efficiency and are only getting better. Power conversion is the suck on efficiency, and that gets better as we move toward higher voltage DC to DC systems.

[BehindBlueI's]

Have you really thought out the long term end results of the solution most often proposed to this? Do you really think that things like universal incomes, or guaranteed jobs, or special regulations, or more centralized planing and government oversight would actually fix this potential problem? Did bread & circuses really work for the Romans, long term? Did the much touted low unemployment of the Soviet Union actually benefit their people?
The answer is no- the cure is much worse than the disease, and the most often prescribed solution is far worse than the problem it is supposed to fix. Trading freedom (specifically economic freedom) for security WILL result in the loss of both.

What economic freedom will their be when automation strips jobs from the traditional sectors of employment with no ready replacements?

What does the political landscape look like without a sizable middle class, which is a historical aberration that we're very fortunate to enjoy in the modern west?