The elephant in the truck
货车里的大象
The emerging system of lifelong learning will do little to reduce inequality
终生学习理念的兴起并不会减少不平等
IMAGINE YOU ARE a 45-year-old long-distance lorry driver. You never enjoyed school and left as soon as you could, with a smattering of qualifications and no great love of learning. The job is tiring and solitary, but it does at least seem to offer decent job security: driver shortages are a perennial complaint in the industry, and the average age of the workforce is high (48 in Britain), so the shortfalls are likely to get worse. America’s Bureau of Labour Statistics (BLS) says there were 1.8m truckers in 2014 and expects a 5% rise in their number by 2024. “As the economy grows, the demand for goods will increase and more truck drivers will be needed to keep supply chains moving,” predicts the BLS website, chirpily.
假设你是一个 45 岁的长途货车司机。你一直都不喜欢学校然后很早便辍学，没有什么学历也并不爱学习。这份工作让人厌倦也让人感到孤独，但是至少可以给你带来不错的安全感：在行业领域总有缺少司机的抱怨存在，这份职业的平均年纪都很大（在英国是 48 岁），所以司机的缺口会变得越来越大。美国劳动统计局（BLS）指出在 2014 年有大约 180 万的货车司机，到 2024年这个数字会增加 5 % 左右。BLS 的网站乐观的预计到：”随着经济的增长，人们对商品的需求也会随之增加，为了保证供应链的顺利运转就需要更多的货车司机。”
But the future might unfold very differently. For all the excitement over self-driving passenger cars, the freight industry is likely to adopt autonomous vehicles even faster. And according to a report in 2014 by Morgan Stanley, a bank, full automation might reduce the pool of American truck drivers by two-thirds. Those projections came hedged with caveats, and rightly so. The pace of adoption may be slowed by regulation. Drivers may still be needed to deal with unforeseen problems; if such jobs require more technical knowledge, they may even pay better. Employment in other sectors may grow as freight costs come down. But there is a chance that in the not too distant future a very large number of truckers will find themselves redundant. The implications are immense.
但是未来可能会以不同的方式展现。随着自动驾驶技术在载人领域的发展，货运产业可能会更快的接受无人货运。根据 2014 年 Morgan Stanley 银行的报告，完全自动驾驶可能将使得美国货车司机的数量减少三分之二。这些预测同样有带来了注意事项作为对冲，也理应如此。无人驾驶替换的进程可能因为制度的原因而减缓。面对未知问题时可能仍然需要司机去解决，如果这些进行工作需要更多的技术知识，薪水或许可以因此增加。运输行业成本的下降可能带来其他领域就业率的增加。但是在不远的将来很大一部分火车司机会被裁员。此种后果影响巨大。
Knowing when to jump is one problem. For people with decades of working life still ahead of them, it is too early to quit but it is also risky to assume that nothing will change. Matthew Robb of Parthenon-EY, a consultancy, thinks that governments should be talking to industry bodies about the potential for mass redundancies and identifying trigger points, such as the installation of sensors on motorways, that might prompt retraining. “This is a boiling-frog problem,” he says. “It is not thought about.”
何时选择转行就是一个问题。对于仍然还有几十年工作年限的人而言，现在转行太早但是认为什么都不会改变又太冒险。咨询机构 Parthenon-EY 咨询机构的 Matthew Robb 认为政府应当和工业体交流关于潜在的巨大裁员风险以及找出痛点在哪，比如在告诉公路上安装传感器就可以进行再培训。他说：“这就是温水煮青蛙的问题，并不是假设问题。”
For lower-skilled workers of this sort the world of MOOCs, General Assembly and LinkedIn is a million miles away. Around 80% of Coursera’s learners have university degrees. The costs of reskilling, in terms of time and money, are easiest to bear for people who have savings, can control their working hours or work for companies that are committed to upgrading their workforce. And motivation is an issue: the tremendous learning opportunities offered by the internet simply do not appeal to everyone.
对于低技能工人而言类似慕课、General Assembly 以及领英这些事物十分遥远。Coursera 的用户中大约 80% 拥有大学学位。重新学习技能的成本，考虑到时间和金钱，对于那些有存款可以控制自己的工作时间或者工作单位支持提高他们员工的工作技能的人而言是最容易承担的。同时动机也是一个问题：互联网上所提供的无数学习机会就是不能够吸引所有人的目光。
