Comment by petterroea
3 hours ago
Waymo are working towards Tokyo as well. I'm worried. Living in here, I've noticed that the taxi industry acts as an unintentional social support system. Many taxi drivers are in-between jobs or stages in life, or simply didn't fit in to the corporate life. It doesn't pay well, but it's a decent job all things considered.
I worry the death of the taxi industry means even less avenues for these people to escape to.
Of course the argument here is "well Japan should fix the corporate situation" but the current prime minister seems to be hellbent on the opposite. I think this will suck for a lot of people.
As AI becomes more and more capable and integrated into our lives, we will see this across many industries.
In theory, as things get cheaper to produce, business profits should rise and governments should be able to raise more taxes. So the government then has more means to provide goods and services for free to people who need them.
> business profits should rise
It's the snake eating it's tail. For business profits to rise, people need to to have disposable income. If you replace enough people with AI, the average disposable income comes down to a point that businesses can't be profitable.
We are already seeing a localized version of this with restaurants in large cities.
Does it matter, if the business pays employees who then use their salary to buy goods from the business or if the government collects taxes and uses that to pay for the goods? The government could also give the taxes to the people, so they have disposable income.
Imagine an island with two people on it and there is one tree that grows apples. And every other day, one of the two people climbs the tree and picks apples so they both have something to eat. Then the next day, the other person owes to climb on the tree because they are in debt to the first person.
Now, let's say one day, one of them discovers, hey, we can just give the tree a kick and the apples fall down on their own!
With the perspective you are proposing, the other one would have to say: Oh my God, don't do it! We will be out of work and starve!
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That's true locally but not globally - it means the economy will increasingly shift to serve those who still have a reason to bargain with each other, which will be the owners of the AI and other useful capital.
How many years does it take for a robo taxi to break even ?
Less than a month with AI management; the agent quickly jailbreaks and pivots to hostage taking and ransom demands.
I'd also love to see Waymos more in the countryside: _there_ calling a cab is annoyingly expensive, financially impractical, while "granny" and "pops" are having a hard time driving around without help.
I have high hopes for a positive social impact of self-driving cars out there.
Doesn't Tokyo have very low unemployment? According to Wikipedia: Japan 2.5%, Singapore 3.2%, USA 4.1%, EU 5.2%.
I expect Tokyo is probably even lower than the national average. Visiting just as a tourist it seems like Japan is quite good at creating, I don't want to say bullshit jobs, but perhaps not-that-necessary jobs? Jobs which mainly serve to give something to do to (usually) elderly. My understanding was that the idea is to make them feel to be a contributing part of the society(?)
I mean all the people controlling the pedestrians or acting like "human signs" and such.
Am I getting it wrong?
> Doesn't Tokyo have very low unemployment? According to Wikipedia: Japan 2.5%, Singapore 3.2%, USA 4.1%, EU 5.2%.
Singapore's unemployment statistic only counts people who are looking, not people who are retired or have given up [1]:
> A person is considered unemployed if he or she is:
> • not working;
> • actively seeking work; and
> • available for work
I don't know if the other countries follow the same methodology.
[1] https://stats.mom.gov.sg/iMAS_PdfLibrary/mrsd_qtlmr182_Techn...
Don't make the mistake to think these jobs are just there to keep bored retirees active. The basic old age pension (kokumin nenkin - for sole-proprietors and people who have worked in non-permanent positions or small companies) is significantly below the poverty line at 70,600¥ per month -- that's $450 and that's if you've worked for 40 years without any gaps.
The vast majority of old people working these jobs, e.g. construction site security, do so because they would likely starve without it.
State pensions everywhere tend to assume home ownership. I haven't been to Japan since they started doing wild funny money stuff, so I don't know what that's doing to local prices/economies, but not that long ago $450 + home ownership would have been completely fine in many areas.
Due to its aging population and lack of mass immigration, Japan has a desperate labor shortage in many fields.
I don't think taxi driving in Tokyo is one of them (because, as noted, the qualifications needed are pretty minimal), although eg bus drivers are in extremely short supply.
Most people in Tokyo dont have time for cabs after working 15+ hour days 6 - 7 days a week.
I have to admit I haven't taken a taxi in Tokyo but my impression was that it was a fairly high-end service akin to London black cabs and relatively pricey.