[Diederich]

I think the key difference 'this time' is how quickly change is happening.

Second, in the past, change was necessarily isolated in most cases, because society and business wasn't so highly connected as it is today.

Concretely, at some point, a major trunking firm could replace most of its drivers with machines over the course of a couple of years, at most.

More generally, the rate of change continues to increase. A few hundred years ago, a person could live their life and see no substantive technological change. Now we see those changes happen, in some cases, in a few years.

[argonaut]

I don't think the change is coming quickly, actually. I think truck drivers have a good 10 years before they're out of a job, both due to technology (self-driving cars won't be fully autonomous for at least 5 years), and due to regulation/adoption (add another 5+ years). This actually leaves them less of an excuse to start retraining now, but it's also a problem because it gives most of them an excuse to dismiss the tech.