Steve Jurvetson, a partner at Draper Fisher Jurvetson, said that he spoke to Uber CEO Travis Kalanick about the Tesla Motors RoboCar. He said that if Tesla can make cars autonomous by 2020 he’ll buy 500,000 of them. Elon Musk says that he expects to build 500,000 cars by that year, including the Model S sedan, the Model X SUV and the mid-range Model 3.
If you thought Uber was anti-driver now, wait until he replaces them all by using cars that don’t need them.
The future is coming faster than people think, and the biggest impact is going to be removing the need for human work.
Remember that the #1 impact to business profit is usually their human workforce, and that business leaders are perpetually looking for ways to eject that expense.
The picture of the future is a strange one. It’s maximum profits for companies like Uber, but with increasingly few people having jobs.
So who’s going to buy the Uber rides when very few people have jobs to pay for anything. And forget transportation–what about shelter and food?
The more human-less our society becomes, the more profit will go to the top and the more the bottom 80% of people in the world will lose their jobs. The classes will separate even more violently than they are now.
There couldn’t be a better time for the Basic Income conversation, and for the broader populist message being put forth by Bernie Sanders and people like him.
He won’t get elected. He won’t even get close. But he will hopefully raise awareness around how screwed the average person is about to become.