AI reality: FedEx is automating the kind of work I used to do for very good money. [View all]

The first time I made a hundred dollars in a day was loading trucks with random sized stuff.

Here's a machine doing that kind of work:

I wasn't even any kind of full time employee, just a part-timer who could set his own schedule. I was also going to school. I was paid union wages even though I wasn't formally union. (Hollywood works the same way if you find yourself, for example, in a one-off reality show gig.)

I'd get a call a five o'clock in the morning that the place I was working for needed more hands to unload load or unload trucks and I could say "yes" or "no." Me answering "no" didn't seem to impact the number of calls I got at all, for the most part because I was reliably available on Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays. If I got the call on half those days I was happy.

That's also how I flunked an organic chemistry class. I got in the habit of ditching classes to work. Unfortunately o-chem is not the kind of class you can ditch and expect to pass.

Ah, those were the days when gasoline for my little car was free and I could pay my monthly rent with a few days work...

My work then was not replaced by AI.

What happened is that unions got broken and people who could do this work were paid less and less.

Fuck you Ronald Reagan and your "revolution."

Twenty years after I'd moved on from this kind of work the people who were still doing it were paid no more than I was even as inflation ate away at their purchasing power and their working conditions became a lot more restrictive. They no longer had any power to say "no" or demand comfortable living wages.