[TulliusCicero]

> If you are Amazon, you have to acknowledge that you are slowly corroding the retail sector, which employs many people in this country. If you are Airbnb, no matter how well-meaning your focus on delighting travellers, you are also going to affect hotel-industry employment.

> Otto, a Bay Area startup that was recently acquired by Uber, wants to automate trucking—and recently wrapped up a hundred-and-twenty-mile driverless delivery of fifty thousand cans of beer between Fort Collins and Colorado Springs. From a technological standpoint it was a jaw-dropping achievement, accompanied by predictions of improved highway safety. From the point of view of a truck driver with a mortgage and a kid in college, it was a devastating “oh, shit” moment. That one technical breakthrough puts nearly two million long-haul trucking jobs at risk.

Ok, and? What exactly do you expect these companies to do? Is it Otto's responsibility to provide new jobs to all the displaced truck drivers? Or should they just shut themselves down, letting all the benefits of self-driving trucks come to naught?

> we need to learn about those who are threatened by it.

I don't see what the author expects to happen here. To the extent that people get screwed over by the free market and we, as a society, want to do something about that, that's clearly the government's job.

And if people vote for representatives that oppose stronger social safety nets, as people literally just did a couple weeks ago(1), then apparently our country -- not Silicon Valley, but the whole voting populace -- is not interested in providing additional assistance to those hurt by technological advancement.

1 - with the obvious caveat about the popular vote

[throwaway729]

Exactly. These are the same truck drivers who have overwhelmingly conservative political views.

If they don't want to help themselves then I'll take the tax breaks and avoid being affected by their self inflicted pain.

[talmand]

Maybe they view that "helping themselves" is stealing from their children's future with unsustainable debt and taxes?

[TulliusCicero]

Helping people back on their feet, if anything, should result in a stronger fiscal future, not a weaker one. Just letting people languish in unemployment tends to result in people acquiring physical health problems, mental health problems, even drug dependency. And then those people get stuck on the disability rolls, draining taxes rather than contributing them.

Just look at all the stories around opioid abuse throughout rural white areas/the rust belt; you think those places are setting us up for a stronger fiscal situation in the future?

[talmand]

I would have to say I haven't seen anything from either party that would address any of that, directly or indirectly. The problems you describe have been ignored for years.

[throwaway729]

Except they didn't vote for a fiscal conservative, they voted for a guy whose primary policy proposals are tax cuts and public works programs. So they're stealing from the future either way.

If Cruz or Rubio or Ryan had been the GOP nominee, I would take your comment more seriously.

[talmand]

From my point of view, no candidate running for President had any fiscal conservative views. Some of the them could talk-the-talk and spit out a few keywords to the media, but none of them really had it if one would look at them hard enough. The Republican party hasn't supported the notion of a fiscal conservative in decades. So the voters went with the candidate that spoke out against the establishment.

Also, there are types of Presidents that can work on a decent future without being a fiscal conservative, it's not a requirement. We'll have to see how it plays out with Trump.